Ms. Bugg, who was representing Neal Travis, the president of South
Central Bell and a member of the task force, spoke up to say that
business leaders had told Mr. Travis they wanted the reform plan being
worked on to do away with tenure for new principals.

Business leaders "cannot support higher taxes if this is not a part
of the package'' of costly school reforms, said Ms. Bugg, South Central
Bell's educational-relations manager.

Blood pressures around the table began to rise at what was perceived
as an ultimatum.

The remark was "a slap in the face for anyone considering
administration in the schools,'' said Nancy Worley, the lone teacher on
the panel.

"I don't like to be hit in the head with a bomb,'' added Sen.
Michael A. Figures, worrying aloud that such a bluntly controversial
remark could torpedo the reform process.

Later in the afternoon, the chairman of the task force read a
statement from Mr. Travis that apologized for the "misimpression ...
that business support for schools and school reform hinged on any
single issue like principal tenure.''

Although Mr. Travis's statement, and a promise to revisit the issue
at a later meeting, seemed to smooth the ruffled feathers that day, the
episode illustrated how easily rattled are the coalitions among
reformers, educators, legislators, and business leaders that are
crucial as Alabama tackles the gargantuan effort of reinventing and
properly funding its chronically neglected schools.

At the end of this week, the lawyers for both sides of the
equity-funding lawsuit that sparked the current reform effort are
slated to present their legal remedy to the problem to a state
judge.

Montgomery County Circuit Court Judge Eugene W. Reese ruled in April
that Alabama's school system is unconstitutional because it fails both
to provide children with equal educational opportunities statewide and
to offer an education that adequately supplies the skills students
need. (See Education Week, April 14, 1993.)

A Daunting Task

The task force, appointed by Gov. James E. Folsom Jr., is also
expected to complete this week a more detailed document that will put
flesh on the "bare bones'' of the legal remedy, according to its
chairman, Charlie D. Waldrep.

After that, a new gubernatorial panel, the Alabama Commission on
School Performance and Accountability, will take over from the task
force and establish learner goals and settle on the standards and
assessments that will be used.

The task of fixing the system is a daunting one given the state's
history, said Wayne Flynt, a professor of history at Auburn
University.

Obstacles to education reform in the state, he explained, include a
cultural disdain for the "life of the mind''; a lack of ownership in
the public schools felt by whites who send their children to private
school; and efforts by farm and timber interests to keep property taxes
the lowest in the nation.

Mr. Flynt, the court-appointed facilitator for the litigants' group,
also noted that the reform plan may call on legislators to levy perhaps
the state's largest tax increase ever as the 1994 elections
approach.

The cost of the reforms--which include accountability, restructuring
secondary education, improving teacher salaries, staff development, and
health and social services--could run over $500 million in the first
year of implementation alone. In addition, a $350 million statewide
bond issue may be proposed to upgrade buildings and school buses.

To complicate matters further, the concept of outcomes-based
education--central to this reform movement--has drawn vehement
criticism here, as elsewhere, from parent groups and religious
conservatives.

An example of that potentially significant opposition was voiced by
T.J. Lee, the president of the Christian Coalition of Morgan County,
who said there is a "socialistic'' agenda behind outcomes-based
education that would increase the power of government over that of the
individual.

Reformers have responded by holding meetings with ministers and
setting up a toll-free number for questions about the plan.

'Pulling Out the Status Quo'

The stakes in the new reform effort are high, since improving the
existing education system is widely viewed as being crucial to the
economic future of Alabama.

The current condition of the schools is so bad, Mr. Flynt said, that
it would be "insane'' for a high-tech business needing skilled labor to
locate in the state.

"I certainly wouldn't want to minimize the Herculean task before the
state, nor the cataclysmic consequences of not doing anything,'' he
said.

"It's going to be a tough job,'' Mr. Waldrep acknowledged. "But it's
going to be made easier by the fact there is a court order.''

If the legislature approves a reform package in a special session
expected in November, voters could consider any new taxes as early as
next June.

Mr. Waldrep likened the process of fundamentally changing Alabama
education to the old story about a sculptor asked how he crafts a
statue of a horse.

"You start with a block of granite and chip away everything that
doesn't look like a horse,'' the artist explains.

Similarly, what reformed education "doesn't look like is what we
had,'' Mr. Waldrep continued. "You start by pulling out the status
quo.''

Focus on Outcomes

Outcomes-based education is at the heart of that change, he said.
Under the new system, Alabama educators will no longer be concerned
with true-false or multiple-choice tests or years spent in school.

"What we want to know is what the student is thinking'' and whether
students can show the teacher what they know, Mr. Waldrep said.

Ten years from now, he predicted, Alabama schools will have
site-based management, principals serving without the security of
tenure, and teachers who are computer literate and can access
information from keyboards right at their desks.

Schools will also routinely use distance-learning provided by fiber
optics and students will have more time for instruction, either through
an extended school day or time on weekends or during the summer.

The great distance between today's reality and Mr. Waldrep's vision
is typified by the situation in Dallas County, a rural community of
48,000 located about an hour's drive west of Montgomery.

The 5,000-student school system was one of the original group of
more than two dozen low-wealth districts that sued the state over
inequitable funding conditions.

Most residents are poor and black, and the economic base--and with
it the capacity to raise much money for schools through property
taxes--resides solely in the county seat of Selma, a separate school
district.

Not only is the county poor, but property-tax levels do not approach
those of other areas. Dallas County levies 11.5 mills per $100 of
assessed value, while the state average is 54 mills.

The last time the district tried to raise taxes, about a decade ago,
school officials failed even to get the necessary approval from the
legislature to hold a voter referendum, said Superintendent Marvin K.
Warren Jr.

As a result, Dallas County ranks 129th out of 129 districts in the
amount of local revenue it contributes to per-pupil spending.

The system needs both more effort to raise local revenue and more
state aid, Mr. Warren said.

"We just feel because a child has been born in Dallas County, he
shouldn't be penalized,'' he said.

Money is so tight that Mr. Warren has had to sacrifice art and music
classes and central air conditioning in order to maintain a safe
school-bus fleet.

Science Sans Bunsen Burners

In spite of the efforts of teachers and administrators, some of whom
pay for such things as library newspaper subscriptions themselves, it
is evident to a visitor that the schools in Dallas County have suffered
for the lack of funds.

At 850-student Southside High School, money is needed to redo aging
restrooms, replace air conditioners, buy more computers, add a second
foreign language, and give counselors more work space, said Principal
Ollis Grayson Jr.

Faded volumes lined the school library's shelves. The single room, a
former auditorium, lacks carrels for individual study. The one bright
spot is a computer with a CD-ROM.

A short distance away at Tipton Elementary/Middle School, there was
no playground equipment of any kind for the 350 students, almost all of
whom qualify for free or reduced-price lunches. Instead, the children
play in uncut grass.

Equipment for a science lab for students in the middle grades
consists of two sinks and two gas jets, which go unused since the
school has no Bunsen burners, said Marcel Bane, a science and
social-studies teacher.

Things that most schools take for granted, Mr. Bane said, are
luxuries at Tipton.

There are no paper towels for the bathrooms, teachers are
responsible for sweeping their own classrooms, and the school's films,
most dating from the 1950's, break often in the projector, he said.

Teachers are limited to 500 photocopies a month, enabling middle
school teachers to give only four pre-printed homework assignments a
month to each of their 125 students.

Whipping Up Support

In addition to the efforts of the litigants and the Governor's task
force to write reform plans, a grassroots organization called A-Plus
has been working for more than two years to whip up popular support for
change.

The group, which includes business leaders, is winding up its second
series of town meetings around the state on a blueprint for reform
designed by some of the people who have worked on the task-force
plan.

A-Plus uses the meetings, which have drawn a total of 12,000 people,
to inform and involve the public and to incorporate suggestions for the
blueprint, now in its second draft.

Last month in Alexander City, about 55 miles northeast of
Montgomery, such a meeting drew a crowd of about 850 people to Benjamin
Russell High School.

The school bears the name of the founder of Russell Corporation, an
athletic-uniform and leisure-wear manufacturer that dominates this town
of almost 15,000.

Attendees were met by A-Plus organizers, who passed out folders
brimming with pamphlets and worksheets and arranged registration for
small discussion groups that followed the auditorium presentation.

Nixing Some Reforms

John Adams, the president and chief executive officer of Russell
Corporation, impressed on listeners the economic importance of
improving Alabama's schools.

"The absence of a qualified work force,'' he added, "guarantees
business and industry have to look elsewhere for their
investments.''

In the small-group discussions that followed in classrooms around
the school, facilitators trained by A-Plus earlier that afternoon kept
participants moving briskly through a series of feedback exercises.

In one room, Jan Conerly, a college English instructor, raced
against the 9 P.M. dismissal time to lead the 13
participants--virtually all local teachers--through the tasks.

The participants quickly read through the two-page summary of the
A-Plus blueprint and offered their comments.

As a group, the teachers voted that they liked eight of the 14
principles, including the beliefs that all students can learn at much
higher levels and that parents, principals, and teachers should get a
major role in decisionmaking.

They did not approve, however, of the ideas that every student can
be taught successfully, that a school system should be measured by how
well its students perform, or that elementary schools should provide
some health and social services.

"There are some students who just don't want to learn,'' one teacher
said.

Saying that they spent too much time in staff development already,
the teachers nixed the principle that would have called for more.

Despite the negative remarks, the high turnout at the community
meetings and the mostly positive feedback left Cathy W. Gassenheimer,
the managing director of A-Plus, optimistic about effecting change.

"We really see a growing groundswell of support for reform,'' she
said. "It's going to be those people all across Alabama ... [who will]
make education reform the number-one issue in the state.''

Vol. 13, Issue 04

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